Every day, I ride the B from 7th Ave. in Brooklyn into Manhattan. Generally, I need the back of the train, and for the last few days, I’ve walked past a rotting apple core perched atop a utility box at the back of the station. The nearest garbage can is the equivalent of a city block and a half away, and the tail end of the station often fills up with discarded water bottles, coffee cups and candy wrappers. It is your typical New York City subway platform.
As veteran subway riders know, New York’s system is not known for its cleanliness. In DC, cops ticket those who eat on the Metro, and the London Tubes shut down each night so that workers can give the system a thorough scrubbing. Here, though, a dearth of garbage cans, 105 years of grime and too few cleaning crews have left the system a mess. If new Transit president Thomas Prendergast can have his way, the subways may look a little cleaner soon. At a forum last week, Prendergast spoke about his desires to clean up the subway system. He wants to consolidate cleaning oversight and improve upon the reach of the MTA’s station overhaul campaign.
Of course, cleanliness starts with the riders. If people continue to discard their trash on the platforms and not in garbage cans, the stations will never be that clean. Maybe we need some DC-style, heavy-handed anti-littering programs. It would, after all, make the trains nice for all of us.
10 comments
I’ve noticed the same thing at the south end of the 2/3 platform at Penn Station. One has to walk quite a distance, and navigate around staircases and a concession stand, to find a trash can. I believe Disney did a study that proved most people will use a trash can if it is within (about) ten steps away, otherwise they’ll find another place to throw their trash. It’s a no-brainer: more trash cans means less trash on the ground, in utility boxes, and atop pay phones; as well as less overflow of the existing ones.
The problem with the trash is the same as every single other problem facing the TA, money. It costs money to pay people to clean and empty trash cans that fill up very quickly.
Maybe so, but if you triple the number of trash cans, it should – in theory – take three times as long to fill up. And I’m not sure if I buy the “cleaning” argument. There is plenty of cleaning to be done as a result of NOT having the trash cans!
But yes, the cans themselves do cost money.
I thought alot of the trash cans were removed after 9-11, to stop terrorists.
It’s been especially bad this week since cleaners were put on snow removal duty, leaving trash cans to overflow for a couple days. I don’t see how Prendergast will accomplish this goal without either more cleaners or new litter enforcement.
I admit that I do eat on the train regularly and I enjoy the fact that they don’t enforce a prohibition on food and drink like they do in DC. I never litter of course, but I’m not sure I’d want to give up that ability to reduce food litter. Commuting represents a significant part of the day for a lot of busy people in the city to eat. It’s a consideration.
But yeah, it’s obvious that a lot of areas of the platforms in some stations haven’t been cleaned in years and years. The yellow rubber caution area by the platform edges are entirely black with grime in some sections of most stations, and you can write your name in dust and grime on the walls and the signs toward the ends of platforms of a lot as well.
There’s also a NYC cultural tendency to prioritize outdoor cleanliness downward. You see that same grime on the wheel assemblies of the jetways at the airports here. It’s always a shock to land in a place like San Francisco and look out the window to see the recently painted undercarriage and wheel assembly of the jetway moving toward your aircraft.
Cleanliness starts with the riders? How long have you been looking at that apple core, Ben? Pitch in! Not your problem? Maybe you didn’t create this microscopic aspect of the problem, and the thought “once I start picking up garbage, where will it end?” has crossed your mind. But just this once, I won’t tell the unions if you won’t.
We have all pretended not to watch that abandoned soda bottle get kicked around the car. We go to sit down and give the seat a quick sweep. We take that coffee cup or newspaper and chuck it between our legs. When was the last time you called someone out for littering? I’ve done it- and I must admit I get cursed at for it. It’s amazing how offended people get when you catch them red-handed.
I guess what I’m saying is, yes we need a ‘heavy-handed campaign’. Yes, we need enforced penalties for littering. Glad Ed mentioned terrorism. Let’s put the ‘see something say something’ team to work. I see littering people!
Yeah, great idea: Ben should grab a slimy, rotting apple core and walk it several hundred feet to the garbage.
Why don’t you offer to do it instead?
What about the streaks of liquid that leave a mark on the platforms? The cleaning employees drag those garbage bags on the floor and rarely do I see them mop up. (I’m not the JP in the previous comment. My first name is abbreviated JP.)